OHI Science | Citation policy
This script prepares scores (status and trend) for Iconic Species in each global coastal region. For each iconic marine species, the countries of occurrence are pulled from the IUCN API. Extinction risk categories for each species are pulled based on current and past assessments; by tracking the assessed extinction risk over time, we can understand the trends of extinction risk for iconic species directly rather than using the “population trend” method from prior OHI assessments.
The Iconic Species sub-goal model calculates a region’s status based upon an unweighted average of species health for all ‘iconic’ species found within each reporting region.
From Halpern et al (2012):
Iconic species are those that are relevant to local cultural identity through a species’ relationship to one or more of the following: 1) traditional activities such as fishing, hunting or commerce; 2) local ethnic or religious practices; 3) existence value; and 4) locally-recognized aesthetic value (e.g., touristic attractions/common subjects for art such as whales). Habitat-forming species are not included in this definition of iconic species, nor are species that are harvested solely for economic or utilitarian purposes (even though they may be iconic to a sector or individual). …
Ultimately, almost any species can be iconic to someone, and so the intent with this goal was to focus on those species widely seen as iconic within a country, and iconic from a cultural or existence value (rather than for a livelihoods or extractive reason). …
The reference point is to have the risk status of all assessed species as Least Concern (i.e., a goal score = 1.0)
The Status of this sub-goal (XICO) is then the % of iconic species in each threat category (as defined by the IUCN Red List), such that:
\[X_{ICO} = \frac{\displaystyle\sum_{category}S_{cat}*w_{cat}}{\displaystyle\sum_{category}S_{cat}}\]
where for each IUCN threat category:
ICO trend is calculated in a similar manner, but weightings are assigned according to IUCN population trend: ‘Decreasing’ = -0.5, ‘Stable’ = 0.0, ‘Increasing’ = +0.5.
Changes since 2015 ICO subgoal for global OHI:
List of iconic species:
Species native country information:
Species extinction risk information:
## Source: local data frame [0 x 5]
##
## Variables not shown: rgn_id <int>, sciname <chr>, iucn_sid <int>, year
## <int>, category <chr>.##
## CD CR DD EN EX LC NT VU
## 271 5776 3183 10524 51 5739 8287 10777